A virtual or a dedicated hosting machine is a standalone machine, that has its own Operating System and keeping the latter up-to-date is an important, although underestimated task. Not simply can an update enhance the performance of your sites, but it can also save you lots of issues down the road. An update may be released for many different reasons, the most prevalent being to fix newly identified security holes, which may allow third-party individuals to access and alter the content you have on the server. You might also see an improved overall performance of your web applications as updates might also be released for better compatibility between the Os and the configuration it operates on in order to get the most out of the hardware. Additionally, if you keep your programs up-to-date, they might also require a later OS version which will have the necessary software dependencies and will enable them to operate effectively.