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 underrated task. Not only can an update enhance the performance of your sites, but it could also save you a great deal of troubles down the road. An update may be released for several reasons, the most frequent being to fix recently identified security holes, which may permit third-party individuals to access and modify the content you have on the hosting server. You may also see an improved efficiency of your web apps as updates might also be released for better compatibility between the Os and the configuration it functions on as a way to get the most out of the hardware. In addition, if you keep your applications up-to-date, they could also require a later Operating system version that will have the necessary software dependencies and will allow them to operate properly.