A virtual or a dedicated server is a standalone machine, that has its own Operating System and keeping the latter up-to-date is an important, although underestimated task. Not only can an update boost the overall performance of your websites, but it can also save you lots of problems in the future. An update could be released for many different reasons, the most frequent being to fix newly discovered security holes, which may enable third-party people to access and modify the content which you have on the hosting server. You will also see an improved functionality of your web programs because updates could also be released for better compatibility between the Operating System and the configuration it functions on in order to get the most out of the hardware. Furthermore, if you keep your programs up-to-date, they could need a later OS version that will have the necessary software dependencies and will allow them to work adequately.