1. A method comprising: receiving, from a software application, at a storage system, a single I/O request to retrieve items involved in an operation that targets a plurality of items that reside on a primary storage that is managed by the storage system; wherein the plurality of items targeted by the operation includes a first set of items and a second set of items; and in response to the single I/O request, the storage system performing steps of: retrieving the first set of items from the primary storage; and retrieving the second set of items from an intermediate cache managed by the storage system.