AUTOMATICALLY HANDLING MESSAGES OF A NON-OPERATIONAL MAIL TRANSFER AGENT WITHIN A VIRTUALIZATION CONTAINER

A mail transfer agent configured to route and deliver electronic mail is executed within a virtualization container of a container deployment unit, wherein the mail transfer agent is configured to access a provisioned storage volume resource of a data storage. It is automatically detected that the mail transfer agent is not operational, including by detecting that the provisioned storage volume resource is no longer mounted by the container deployment unit, wherein the mail transfer agent has stored in the provisioned storage volume resource one or more messages remaining to be processed.