A virtual or a dedicated hosting machine is a standalone machine, that has its own Operating System and maintaining the latter up-to-date is a vital, although underrated task. Not only can an update improve the performance of your internet sites, but it will also save you a lot of problems in the future. An update can be released for a lot of reasons, the most widespread being to fix recently discovered security holes, which may permit third-party people to access and modify the content that you have on the server. You will also see an improved performance of your web programs because updates could also be released for better compatibility between the Operating System and the configuration it operates on in order to get the most out of the hardware. Additionally, if you keep your apps up-to-date, they might also require a later Operating system version that will have the required software dependencies and will allow them to function properly.