A virtual or a dedicated hosting server is a standalone machine, which has its own Operating System and maintaining the latter up-to-date is a vital, albeit underrated task. Not simply can an update improve the overall performance of your internet sites, but it will also save you a lot of troubles in the future. An update may be released for a number of reasons, the most common being to fix recently found security holes, which may enable third-party individuals to access and change the content you have on the server. You might also see an improved performance of your web apps as 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 need a later Operating system version that will have the needed software dependencies and will permit them to work properly.