install a newer Mac OS on a Snow Leopard machine

[bookit]

I recently upgraded my ipad to os 9, and now I cannot sync it with my Snow Leopard iMac. 

I need to continue running Snow Leopard, as the primary program I use to run my business needs Rosetta to run.

Is it possible to run Yosemite or El Capitan in a partition, and, if so, how would I go about it.

I already have VmWare Fusion, which I was previously using to run Windows 7 on my Mac.  I no longer need to run Windows, but I do need to run a newer Mac version without sacrificing Snow Leopard.

[HPReg]

> I need to continue running Snow Leopard, as the primary program I use to run my business needs Rosetta to run.

The proper way to handle this is:

1) You update your Mac host to Yosemite or El Capitan.

2) In VMware Fusion, you create a virtual machine in which you install Snow Leopard _Server_ (regular Snow Leopard will not run because of Apple EULA restrictions). In that VM, you run Rosetta and your business program.