US Patent 10397189 Peered virtual private network endpoint nodes

A provider network includes a service that creates virtual private network (VPN) endpoint nodes. Application programming interfaces are available that the creation of VPN endpoint nodes, peer them together, and attach them to respective virtual private networks to thereby establish communication tunnels between pairs of virtual private networks. Each VPN endpoint node may be implemented as a fault tolerant endpoint node in which the node is created as a plurality of virtual machines. Each of the virtual machines is configured from a common machine image that includes software capable of causing the respective virtual machine to configure a tunnel such as an IPSec tunnel. One of the virtual machines, however, is operated in an active mode, while another virtual machine is configured to operate in a standby mode.