A virtual or a dedicated server is a standalone machine, that has its own Os and maintaining the latter up-to-date is an essential, albeit underrated task. Not only can an update boost the general performance of your sites, but it can also save you lots of troubles down the road. An update can be released for many different reasons, the most prevalent being to fix recently found security holes, which may allow third-party individuals to access and alter the content you have on the server. You can also see an improved performance of your web programs as updates can also be released for better compatibility between the Operating System and the configuration it functions on so as to get the most out of the hardware. Moreover, if you keep your applications up-to-date, they might also need a later Operating system version that will have the necessary software dependencies and will allow them to operate properly.
