VAIO, introduced in vSphere 6.0 U1, permits the addition of seamless new third-party software-based data services; the technology's partners can now put their solution directly into the I/O stream of a VM through a filter that intercepts data before it goes to the disk. It enables the secure filtering of a VM's I/O safely in the kernel, with a well-defined framework and according to storage policies. VAIO is totally storage-agnostic and works with VVOLs, vSAN, and legacy storage.

VAIO could be integrated both in traditional and software-defined storage.

Caching and replication are the initial use cases (for replication, the next version 10 of Veeam Backup and Replication will use VAIO for the new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) feature ), but potentially can also work for anti-virus, data inspections, and other services.