I have been in IT for around 7 years now and have benefited greatly from Open Source as well as free commercial offerings like Vmware Server that allow me to setup virtual environments and get some hands on time with different OS's and software.

I am starting a new job in a few weeks which has a mixed environment where i will be exposed to more AIX than Linux and i am looking for a way to get some practical experience with the OS prior to my start date.

I understand that AIX is a commercial project so i'm not going to sit here and ask for a link to a free download but besides reading the documentation on redbooks, which is very good, does anyone have any suggestions on how best to spend the next few weeks to better familiarize myself for working with AIX?

Note: I am proficient on Linux, specifically RHEL and have a satisfactory ability on Sun.