In the Vector Connectivity problem we are given an undirected graph $$G=(V,E)$$G=(V,E), a demand function $$\lambda :V\rightarrow \{0,\ldots ,d\}$$ź:Vź{0,ź,d}, and an integer k. The question is whether there exists a set S of at most k vertices such that every vertex $$v\in V{\setminus } S$$vźV\S has at least $$\lambda (v)$$ź(v) vertex-disjoint paths to S; this abstractly captures questions about placing servers or warehouses relative to demands. The problem is $$\mathsf {NP}$$NP-hard already for instances with $$d=4$$d=4 (Cicalese et al., Theoretical Computer Science '15), admits a log-factor approximation (Boros et al., Networks '14), and is fixed-parameter tractable in terms of k (Lokshtanov, unpublished '14). We prove several results regarding kernelization and approximation for Vector Connectivity and the variant Vector d-Connectivity where the upper bound d on demands is a fixed constant. For Vector d-Connectivity we give a factor d-approximation algorithm and construct a vertex-linear kernelization, that is, an efficient reduction to an equivalent instance with $$f(d)k=O(k)$$f(d)k=O(k) vertices. For Vector Connectivity we have a factor $$\mathsf {opt} $$opt-approximation and we can show that it has no kernelization to size polynomial in k or even $$k+d$$k+d unless $$\mathsf {NP} \subseteq \mathsf {coNP}/\mathsf {poly}$$NP⊆coNP/poly, which shows that $$f(d){\text {poly}}(k)$$f(d)poly(k) is optimal for Vector d-Connectivity. Finally, we give a simple randomized fixed-parameter algorithm for Vector Connectivity with respect to k based on matroid intersection.