A virtual or a dedicated hosting machine is a standalone machine, that has its own Operating System and always keeping the latter up-to-date is an important, albeit underrated task. Not simply can an update boost the performance of your websites, but it will also save you a lot of troubles down the road. An update could be released for many different reasons, the most frequent being to fix newly discovered security holes, which may permit third-party individuals to access and change the content you have on the hosting server. You may also see an improved efficiency of your web apps because updates could also be released for better compatibility between the Operating System and the configuration it works on so as to get the most out of the hardware. Also, if you keep your programs up-to-date, they might need a later Operating system version which will have the necessary software dependencies and will permit them to operate properly.