A virtual or a dedicated hosting machine is a standalone machine, which has its own Os and maintaining the latter up-to-date is a vital, albeit underrated task. Not simply can an update boost the general performance of your internet sites, but it can also save you a lot of problems down the road. An update may be released for a lot of reasons, the most common being to fix recently discovered security holes, which may enable third-party people to access and modify the content that you have on the server. You might also see an improved efficiency of your web applications because updates may also be released for better compatibility between the Os and the configuration it functions on so as to get the most out of the hardware. In addition, if you keep your applications up-to-date, they could also require a later Operating system version which will have the needed software dependencies and will enable them to work properly.