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, although underestimated task. Not only can an update enhance the functionality of your websites, but it can also save you a great deal of issues in the future. An update could be released for a lot of reasons, the most widespread being to fix newly discovered security holes, which may allow third-party individuals to access and change the content that you have on the server. You might also see an improved overall performance of your web applications since updates may also be released for better compatibility between the Os and the configuration it operates on so as to get the most out of the hardware. Furthermore, if you keep your applications up-to-date, they might also require a later OS version which will have the necessary software dependencies and will permit them to function adequately.