What happens when you run migrations on your production server?

Migration doesn't know if it's being run on production or local environment, so whatever action you see on local environment you'll see it in production.

Thanks for the reply @alenn

What solutions are people using for preserving data if the tables are wiped or am I misunderstanding?

The only migrations run are ones that have not been run before for that database. Laravel keeps track of the ones that have been run in the migrations table that it makes.

The only reason data/tables would be deleted is if you ran artisan migrate:rollback or artisan migrate:reset, which I do not recommend doing on a production database. Ever. Typically it not realistic to revert migrations in that type of environment.

Thanks for the feedback @ltrain

php artisan migrate will as @ltrain stated add to your data base

php artisan migrate:refresh will delete all tables and re-migrate fresh tables

If you're doing a new site on production but you have data to go into the table, you will migrate first, then import.

Thanks @bashy and @jekinney that helps maje it a bit more clear.