A virtual or a dedicated hosting machine is a standalone machine, that has its own Os and maintaining the latter up-to-date is a crucial, although underestimated task. Not only can an update boost the general performance of your websites, but it can also save you a great deal of problems later on. An update could be released for a lot of reasons, the most widespread being to fix recently found security holes, which may permit third-party individuals to access and modify the content which you have on the hosting server. You may also see an improved performance of your web applications since updates might also be released for better compatibility between the Os and the configuration it functions on as a way to get the most out of the hardware. Furthermore, if you keep your applications up-to-date, they may need a later OS version that will have the necessary software dependencies and will enable them to operate properly.