A virtual or a dedicated hosting server is a standalone machine, that has its own Operating System and keeping the latter up-to-date is an important, though underrated task. Not simply can an update improve the general performance of your sites, but it can also save you a lot of issues later on. An update could be released for many different reasons, the most prevalent being to fix newly identified security holes, which may enable third-party people to access and modify the content you have on the hosting server. You might also see an improved efficiency of your web apps as updates might also be released for better compatibility between the Os and the configuration it works on as a way to get the most out of the hardware. Moreover, if you keep your applications up-to-date, they may need a later Operating system version that will have the needed software dependencies and will allow them to function adequately.