A virtual or a dedicated hosting machine is a standalone machine, that has its own Os and always keeping the latter up-to-date is an essential, although underrated task. Not simply can an update enhance the general performance of your sites, but it will also save you a great deal of troubles in the future. An update could be released for many different reasons, the most common being to fix recently found security holes, which may allow third-party individuals to access and change the content that you have on the server. You will also see an improved overall performance of your web programs as updates could also be released for better compatibility between the Os and the configuration it operates on as a way to get the most out of the hardware. Also, if you keep your programs up-to-date, they might also need a later Operating system version which will have the needed software dependencies and will enable them to operate effectively.