Component containers play a key role as the infrastructure of component-based distributed applications at deployment and running time. In recent years, various kinds of component models are emerging and evolving, this brings great challenges to the development component container. Product line engineering is one of the most promising techniques to improve the quality and productivity of software. Study on product line architecture (PLA) for component containers is the most important, and of great help to improve the reusability of architectural design. Since component models are cornerstone of container design, an analyzing framework of component models is proposed integrated with domain analysis. This paper builds the domain model of component container by establishing mapping between component model elements and domain requirement elements. Based on the design principles of component container and variability encapsulation rules, this paper proposes a component container PLA, named PLACE, which meets domain requirements of component container by introducing optionality, hierarchical module structuring and decision model. PLACE is also applied to the development of several component containers on ONCE platform, which proved the effectiveness of this approach.